If ever there was a story to emerge from the new global
war on terrorism which encapsulates the contradictions and controversy
inherent in defining the new world order, it is the story of the Iranian
Mojahedin-e Khalq.

Although it is listed as a terrorist entity in all major
Western countries, it seems the West still hasn’t got to grips with what
that means.

The MKO is still active in Europe and USA because there
is no consensus on how to deal with them. Partly it is a symptom of the
MKO’s own tactics – not only do they terrorise governments by having people
burn themselves in public places, but anyone who even makes the slightest
criticism of the group comes in for a massive counter attack. It works only
because organisations do not have the resources (as the MKO had money from
Saddam Hussein and its own in-house slave labour) to reply to these
orchestrated attacks. The lack of hard information about the MKO is as much
due to this tactic as to its own lack of newsworthiness. For news editors,
the MKO is simply not worth the effort. Ignorance prevails and the MKO fill
this silence with their own very peculiar version of reality.

In spite of being designated as a terrorist entity, and
being a foreign terrorist group in Iraq, the capitulated MKO was nominated
very quickly after the invasion in 2003 by US neocons and Israel’s Likud
Party as a useful bargaining chip in any talks with Iran. This started with
the idea that Al Qaida suspects reportedly captured in Iran could be
exchanged for MKO leaders captured by the USA in Iraq. This didn’t happen.
Instead, the latest version of this is the use of the MKO as a threat
against Iran if it doesn’t comply to US and European demands over its
nuclear program – basically that it stop enriching uranium.

In this, both side are playing a game of cat and mouse.
Iran insists that the IAEA is the responsible body to which it should
answer, not national governments, and that there is no international law to
prevent the enrichment of uranium that it is pursuing. However, threats hang
over the debate. The US administration threat that after Afghanistan and
Iraq will come the turn of Iran has receded and dwindled to nothing as no
one now believes such a military adventure is possible or desirable.
However, some in the US have not given up the idea that the MKO could be
brandished as a threat against Iran and has persuaded some in Europe to pick
up this idea and insert it as a condition for compliance. In other words, if
Iran does not give up its enrichment program, the West will re-arm the MKO
and employ it against Iran.

So, several issues are involved. The major issue of
course is how the re-arming of a terrorist entity and paying it to launch
terrorist attacks against an enemy will be squared in the context of the
USA’s global war on terrorism. Europe has said that it will continue to
regard the MKO as terrorist as part of its suspension demands of Iran. Does
this mean that should Iran continue with enrichment the MKO’s recent violent
history in Iraq – killing Kurds, Shiites and Iranians – is to be ignored for
political expediency? Where does this leave European politics?

Another major question is whether the MKO is actually
perceived as a threat by Iran anyway. Certainly, since well before the US
invasion of Iraq in 2003 the Iranian government had been sending signals
that the MKO was, as far as Iran was concerned, a defunct force which posed
no threat to Iran’s national security. With the MKO’s armed forces sitting
just over the border in Iraq, there would be little credence given to these
statements unless they had at least some basis in fact.

Aside from these two major concerns, it is surely useful
to look at the MKO itself to see what kind of ‘resource’ it offers to
Western backers in their conflict with Iran.

Whatever its past history and its past strength, the MKO
is now a much reduced force. From the point of manpower the organisation has
been severely depleted over the past decade. Currently, out of 3800 captured
in Iraq by US forces, at least 500 are being held separately in a US base
after they demanded separation from the group. Of the remaining forces
several have simply escaped from Ashraf camp and disappeared – a figure of
around 300 has been rumoured. The MKO itself has stated that around 10% of
the original 3800 have expressed a desire to leave. We can assume this is a
conservative figure based on the group’s own propaganda needs. What this
does tell us is that morale in the MKO’s Iraqi camps is extremely low. Of
course another problem for western backers who want to revive the terrorist
capability of the MKO to use against Iran is the age of the majority of
members. Most joined around the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979 and
the average age of the combatants is now well over forty five years old. To
have any hope as an effective fighting force there would need to be a quick
fire campaign to recruit more willing younger fighters, and some kind of
fast track induction into the ideology to get them to be willing martyrs to
their cause. Where and how this could happen is open to question in its own
right.

The other aspect of its reduced force is the MKO’s
standing in the international political scene. At one time, the MKO did
enjoy political support from many in the West. In fact the organisation was
financed by Saddam Hussein to organise over the top propaganda campaigns
precisely in order to attract this support. The MKO’s actual motive was to
convince Saddam Hussein that it was a viable force against Iran in order to
justify the continued arming and training of its fighters by Hussein’s
regime. But even before the downfall of Saddam’s regime, the MKO had been
losing its political ground as its activities were being re-assessed in the
context of 9/11 and the threat of global terror. The US State Department
first listed the MKO as terrorist back in 1997 and all major western
governments have followed suit.

So again we return to the contradictions in this
terrorist listing. It is apparent that no one really knows at what level
this is to be taken seriously.

Although it has no political support and a dwindling an
ageing membership, the MKO has pushed itself under the nose of a few willing
western backers with its willingness to regurgitate Israel’s anti-Iran
agenda over the nuclear issue. The terrorist MKO organisation now has its
own spokesman, Alireza Jafarzadeh, on FOX News channel to talk about this
issue. A ‘freedom of expression’ which was questioned by Massoud Khodabandeh
a former member of the MKO, now working in the UK as a Telecoms and Security
Consultant and who, as a former high ranking member, is well placed to
criticise the MKO. Mr Khodabandeh challenged FOX News to host a live debate
with other Iranian analysts and experts on the claims Jafarzadeh makes on
behalf of the MKO.

The Neocons and far right Israelis’ backing for the MKO
though is battling an uphill struggle against unpalatable facts. The Duelfer
Report into Iraq’s weapons exposed the MKO as a beneficiary of Saddam
Hussein’s corruption of the UN’s Oil-for-Food program. The organisation
received vouchers for the sale of oil overseas allowing it to potentially
generate around $11.2 million. Alongside secretly filmed videos of top MKO
officials bargaining over the price for terror targets picked out for them
by Iraqi Secret Service officials, these revelations have left little room
for manoeuvre for those still willing to gamble on backing the mercenary
outfit.

As a
result, a US official in Washington
revealed on condition of anonymity the possibility that around 4-6 of the
MKOs top members who with around 40 others will be tried in Iraq for crimes
against humanity and war crimes, may be taken to the US to be tried. So
while some on the far right want to reconstitute the MKO as an armed threat
against Iran, particularly over the nuclear issue, there are also some in
the State Department who argue that the arrest and disarming of the MKO is
not enough and the captive terrorist leaders should be proffered for
exchange in order to broker deals with Iran. Either way, the MKO appears to
have little say in its own future. And surely, in the age of the global war
on terrorism, that is how is should be.

Still, over
in Europe the MKO is continuing with the kind of propaganda activities it
has always undertaken. Most recently, the organisation held some
demonstrations to protest Europe’s handling of the nuclear issue. In this
case, the number of people participating was so minimal that even the
backers must be having second thoughts about whether this is an effective
way of spending money. In this current round of propaganda activity, a
demonstration was held in Brussels in October this year in which the MKO
resorted in desperation to paying Swedish schoolchildren to attend.

When such events occur in western countries, it leaves
one to wonder where the real threat of the MKO lies. Iran has said it does
not regard the MKO as a threat and indeed welcomes back deserting members
with open arms and forgiveness. The MKO in Iraq has been successfully
disarmed and weakened with no effort on Iran’s part. There is no threat of
cross border terrorist attacks now. Instead, the MKO who fled at the start
of the war, have taken their battles with them to Europe. The
self-immolations in June 2003 attested to the continued violent approach of
the organisation against all its enemies. Since these public burnings were
directed specifically against western governments, we can only wonder who
the MKO’s enemies now actually are? Recently, an attempted abduction of a
former member in the shopping streets of a German city confirmed findings
that one of the MKO’s primary missions in Europe is to eliminate and silence
its critics starting with witnesses to the murders and tortures committed in
Iraq. It appears that the MKO’s battle has now become western-centric rather
than Iran-centric. But, this will come as no surprise to those who are aware
of the MKO’s deep antipathy to western ‘Imperialism’.

For many the recent prevarication over the MKO has echoes
of the way Al Qaida was treated up to the events of 9/11. Until that
defining moment it wasn’t really clear whether Al Qaida was terrorist on
paper or de facto terrorist. Whether or not 9/11 could have been prevented,
the lesson to be learned is that the internal politics of these
organisations will override whatever role they are paid to undertake. In the
end terrorism is their modus operandi. Are those who back the MKO for short
term political reasons sure they will be able to control it when it is no
longer needed?